


Queensguard

by catherineflowers



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bondage, Breathplay, Dark, F/M, Forced Voyeurism, Heavy Angst, Jaime has his cake and eats it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 16:50:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: In an alternate universe where Jaime doesn't send Brienne away with Oathkeeper, things get dark.





	Queensguard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainTarthister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainTarthister/gifts).



> I wanted to write something dark and angsty. So if this isn't your bag, then best not to proceed beyond this point!
> 
> But I hope this is an interesting look at a portion of the story and an interesting "what if"! I certainly had fun writing it.
> 
> Dedicated to CaptainTarthister and the gorgeous Cosmo, for screaming at Brienne!

Cersei has the Mountain.

Jaime has Brienne.

She stands at Jaime’s shoulder, huge and tall and resplendent in her black-and-silver armour, watching as he kneels before the Septon. Head bowed, hand outstretched, tied to Cersei’s hand.

_Father. Mother. Maiden. Crone._

Bound to Cersei in the eyes of Gods and men.

_Warrior. Smith. Stranger._

They take each other’s cloaks, red exchanged for red. Lions for lions.

Brienne goes away inside.

After the ceremony, Brienne accompanies Jaime to his chambers in silence, black boots clacking on stone after stone after stone of the corridors of King’s Landing, perfectly in time with his boots. His face is grim.

He closes the door behind them, pours himself a glass of wine and drains it in a single gulp. She stands guard at the door, straight-backed. Hand on the hilt of her sword.

“That can’t have been easy,” he says into the silence. “I’m sorry.”

She says nothing.

He comes to her. Still she says nothing. He reaches for her and she doesn’t move. Stares straight ahead, past his head.

He grabs her. Rips her helmet off so he can see her face and throws it to the floor. It rolls across the rug like a severed head, black and silver. Black and silver.

He grabs her chin, a little too hard, squashing her cheeks and her lips with his grip. Keeps her face twisted towards him until she looks at him.

“Kiss me,” he says.

“No.”

He kisses her anyway. Lips and teeth and tongue and breath. Hard. Harder still, squashing her in his arms and backing her into the door. Groaning hot breath in her face.

“It doesn’t change anything, Brienne,” he whispers. “It doesn’t change anything for us.”

Oh, but it does. It _does_. It burns her black, it stabs her dead. It rots her, mind and body. Once and for all. His hand, bound to Cersei’s hand, his lips on Cersei’s. His life for her. For Cersei, always.

He kisses Brienne until he’s hard, thrusts his hand into the split of her hauberk, and shoves it between her legs. Presses his mouth, his lips and his teeth and his nose, nibbling and kissing and moaning, into the depths of her neck.

She doesn’t resist. Not when he bends her over the table, not when he pulls her breeches down. Not when his fingers slip through the hair between her legs and the hot head of his cock prods against the meat of her thighs.

He pushes inside her with a plaintive cry.

He pants hot breath in her ear, moaning her name, moaning his love, begging her to tell him that she loves him too.

She can’t. She can’t say it. She’s too dead, she’s too gone.

Her body betrays her, though, as it always does. He knows her well, knows the places to touch her, knows all the points that make her weak, and weak, and weak and _his_.

She climaxes with an ugly cry, face pressed hard into the rough wood of the table, knees giving way beneath her. Her breastplate scrapes against the tabletop and her hands claw at his arse to get him deeper and deeper and harder and harder. She comes again – useless, perfect, hopeless, helpless.

There’s no pleasure in it though. Not any more. It’s a squeeze of muscles, a release of tension. It’s a long time since being with Jaime brought Brienne any joy.

He slams into her again and again. So hard the table scrapes across the floor. Yanks himself out and spends on her arse with a strangled grunt.

Afterwards, he’s quiet. Tucks his cock away and hands her a towel so she can clean his seed from her arse cheeks.

She pulls up her breeches, rebuckles her swordbelt. Puts her helmet on over her sweaty, messy hair and her flushed face. Stands at the doorway once more, back to her duty.

He opens his door and calls for his handmaids. They scurry in to attend him, six of them – they bathe him and dress him and pretty his hair.

There is to be dinner, and a reception to attend now. Red silks, golden silks. His golden hair, longer now and curling slightly at his ears. Perfume, to cover up the stink of sweat and sex and big Brienne all over him. If Cersei knew …

He looks at himself in the mirror and not at her. She’s just a Queensguard, just a part of the background.

The handmaids help him to put his sword at his hip, the beautiful Valyrian steel sword with the Lion head pommel. And there he stands, a thing of beauty. Every inch the perfect Knight. Every inch the perfect consort to the Queen.

Only Brienne knows.

When he’s dressed and ready, he dismisses the handmaids and strides towards Brienne, towards the door. Chin high, ready to face them all.

But he slips his fingers into hers, squeezes her hand. His eyes seek out her eyes through the holes in her helm.

“I chose to consummate my marriage with you,” he says. Little more than a whisper. “Remember that, if it helps.”

It doesn’t.

It doesn’t help as he leaves her side as soon as they cross the threshold of the feasting hall, crossing the crowd to take Cersei in his arms. It doesn’t help when he sits by Cersei’s left hand at the main table, toasting each other with golden goblets of the very finest wine. Feeding each other morsels of food from their forks, finishing each other’s sentences and gazing green eyes to green eyes.

Nor does it help after dinner, when she has to watch them dance together and she has to watch Jaime gaze at Cersei like she’s all he ever wanted. When she has to stand, shoulder to shoulder with the Mountain, still and cold and perfect like the corpse he is as they bid their tight-lipped guests goodnight and head for Cersei’s bedchamber.

Jaime dithers at the door, wanting to dismiss her. But Cersei is quicker – she dismisses the Mountain. Tells Brienne she has the night watch, a green gleam of spite and curiosity in her eyes.

It won’t be the first time Cersei has forced Brienne to listen as she fucks Jaime. It’s quite deliberate. Meant to remind her of her place, her status. Her ugliness.

A great cow. A shambling creature dressed in man’s mail.

How many times has Cersei mocked Brienne for wanting her brother? For being in love with him? Countless – in front of Jaime, in front of lords and ladies and princes and kings. Mocked her loyalty, her honour, her faith in Jaime’s honour. A smirk on her lips as she does it. Jaime’s smirk.

Brienne has borne it all. Every time Cersei has told her that her honour means nothing because it comes from her cunt (or is it a cock she keeps in those breeches?). Every time she has been snapped at for “mooning” over Jaime when her eyes have slid to him, even once. Every time Cersei told her how worms would have her maidenhead before her brother did.

Brienne has borne it all for love. Because she knew it wasn’t true, because Cersei didn’t know.

She didn’t know how Jaime took Brienne into his arms at night, how he held her hand and gazed into her eyes. How he worshipped the great lumbering body that Cersei loved to mock – worshipped it with his eyes and his lips and his cock. How he called her his soul, and the last vestige of his goodness, and held her close so he could keep that flame alight.

Cersei didn’t know how they had shared a cabin all the way to Dorne, a tent all the way to Riverrun. And he’d been the one whose honour had come from his cock, he was the one mooning over her. And the maidenhead that Cersei loved to tease her for was long gone. Jaime had taken that while he was still a Kingsguard even, in his chambers in the White Sword Tower shortly after Joffrey died.

He’d called her up there to read his pages from the White Book – a scant paragraph that bothered him a lot. He’d looked over sadly at a sword, a beautiful sword he had displayed on a rack, looked like he was going to pick it up. But then, instead, he kissed her.

Kissed her and kept kissing her, kissed her until she was little more than a flushed blob, swooning in his arms. She had been a girl, she thought now. An innocent. It had been easy for him to push through her resistance. She was overcome, overwhelmed by the sensation of kissing a man she was intensely attracted to. He must have known that.

He took her to his bed. Showed her pleasure – his mouth on her cunt until she screamed. Then he took her maidenhead. He didn’t ask if he could, if she wanted to save it for her marriage bed, he just mounted her as she lay there boneless and spent, and took it. _Took_ it. Thrust between her legs until he was deep inside her body. She was so wet it didn’t hurt at all.

She remembers watching him, the golden deliciousness of his body on top of her, cradled between her pale white thighs. She remembers his face, eyes closed and mouth open. The way his brow creased as his pace quickened, the way his breath grew ragged. The way his teeth came together and his lips pulled back as he got close to his climax – the way he looked like he was almost in pain. She remembers the way his missing right hand had reflexively reached for her breast, the way he’d quickly replaced it with his left.

She remembers running her hands down his back as he fucked her, and feeling daring because she let herself cup the cheeks of his arse. Little knowing that in a few scant weeks she would be licking him there without a thought. But it had felt good, urging him harder, and it had excited him too.

He pulled out and spent on her breasts with a guttural growl, the seed warm from his body. She looked at it with wonder and curiosity as he panted above her, his cock still twitching in his hand, his chin dropped to his chest. Jaime Lannister. Jaime Lannister had made love to her.

Afterwards he displayed his cock to her, the smear of blood that ran its length, and grinned.

“There,” he said. “Did you see that sword in there? My father gave it to me – it’s Valyrian steel. I’ve been trying to think of a name.”

“And you thought of one now?” she asked, her voice throaty and husky. A woman’s voice, for the first time.

He nodded, a grin on his face that was wicked as a knife. “I’ll call it Maiden’s Blood. Only you and I will know the reason.”

He laid with her and held her and kissed her, not caring that she was covered in his spend. It matted in his chest hair as he kissed her. He pulled back to stroke her lips, her chin, her neck, with gentle fingertips.

“I love you, Brienne,” he said. “I’ve fallen in love with you, I think.”

The words fell easily from her own mouth, too. “I love you too. Jaime.”

He chuckled at her hesitation in saying his name and she hurt – she _hurt_ from love as she gazed into his perfect green eyes. His. _His._ She was his and he was hers, she thought.

Brienne had never before known the joy of love, the joy of laying with a man, the joy of trusting him utterly, body and soul. Even the feeling of his body, being skin-on-skin with him, was a revelation.

So when he whispered in her ear and asked her not to leave him, not to go back to Tarth, she agreed. He _needed_ her, he said. She was his last chance at honour.

He found honours for her, too. A place for her in Tommen’s Kingsguard.

And because Jaime asked her to, because her body was a slave to Jaime’s body, because she loved, loved, _loved_ the feeling of being loved by him, Brienne of Tarth fell to her knees before a King she knew was not a King. She took vows she knew she would not keep. For love. For Jaime. Everything for Jaime. So she could help him find his honour once again.

That night, the white cloak dropped to the stone floor of her tiny little cell in the White Sword Tower and Jaime walked across it in his muddy boots as he disrobed her.

She wrapped around him as he fucked her, on their knees against the headboard of her narrow little bed. Her declarations echoed off the stones as he groaned and panted in her ear. She loved her Lord Commander. Loved him, and he loved her too.

When he came, he bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

In the darkness afterward, he thanked her. Thanked her for staying. She laughed and told him she didn’t have a choice now. She’d made vows. He didn’t laugh.

The next day, her duties began. She rose at dawn to scrub the mud from her cloak and took her place, resplendent and golden, outside the bedchamber of King Tommen while he slept. The sun rose through the wide windows and she stood there, chin high, hands on her sword.

She stood there. And stood there.

She stood there through a muscle cramp, through an itchy nose. Through hours of a bursting bladder. Staring at the wall. Guarding the king.

When, finally, Jaime came to relieve her, he brought his sister.

Cersei spluttered with laughter as soon as she saw Brienne. Made a comment about Jaime being so desperate for Kingsguards that he was willing to put cattle in armour. Jaime made a face at his sister but said nothing.

The three of them escorted King Tommen to his lessons. Brienne expected to remain, but Cersei asked her to guard her and her brother while they ate lunch. Nothing, she said, nothing was to disturb them.

Jaime’s eyes went wide, and he looked at Brienne. He looked back at Cersei, looked like he was about to say something, but he said nothing.

He lowered his eyes and followed Cersei into her chambers.

Brienne could hear them talking, though too faint to make out what it was they said. Then all went quiet. Brienne presumed they were eating. But slowly, softly, the sounds started reaching her ears through the thick wooden door. Hard breaths. Moans. The slap of skin on skin, at a frantic pace. Cersei crying out, theatrically.

Brienne stared at the wall, tonguing the lump on her lip where Jaime had bitten her last night. Stabbed through the heart.

Later, he came to Brienne. Knocked on her door as she polished her armour in the windowless gloom of her cell. She didn’t answer, but he let himself in anyway. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak.

He stood there, his head tilted, trying to make her look at him. She did not.

“Are you angry?” he asked at last.

She didn’t answer. Scrubbed her breastplate.

He came to her. Knelt in front of her. Maiden’s Blood gleaming in the light from the single candle in the room.

“Brienne?” he said. “Are you angry with me?”

She dropped her breastplate. “What do you think?”

“I think you are. Why?”

“ _Why?!”_

“It was tactless of Cersei. Indiscreet. But you know I’m with her.”

“Do I?”

“ _Yes_. I’ve never made a secret of it, Brienne. Never. Not to you.”

She let out a breath. A desperate scoff.

“Joffrey and Myrcella and Tommen are all my children. I’ve never denied it, have I? You _knew._ You knew I was with Cersei.”

She looked at him then, a million insults blazing on her tongue. A million curses.

“Tell me you didn’t know.”

“I knew! Of course I knew. But I didn’t know it was still happening.”

“Why would you think it wasn’t? Have I ever said it wasn’t?”

“No, but –”

“But what?”

“You – you’re …”

“I’m what?”

_Mine_ , she wanted to say. _You’re with me._ But the words died in her mouth. Looking at him, at his beauty, at his golden perfection, she realised the lie she had been telling herself. She’d thought they were being discreet because they were in the Kingsguard, breaking their vows with each other. She didn’t realise she was his mistress. She didn’t realise she was his whore.

He took hold of her face, between his good hand and his golden one. Held it so she looked at him.

“I love you, Brienne,” he said. “With all my heart. Haven’t I told you that every time we’ve been together?”

She couldn’t speak.

“Haven’t I?”

She nodded. He had. He had told her every time. A thousand times.

“How could you _ever_ doubt that? Ever?”

The dam broke then, and she cried. Hard. He folded her into his arms, pressed her to his sweet-smelling neck. Jaime. _Jaime_. She just wanted to be loved by this man – her body cried out for him and her heart just _hurt_.

He cried too – she felt his tears on his face as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

“Don’t leave me,” he sobbed. “I’m so lost, Brienne. Don’t let me go. You have to stay.”

So she stayed.

Stayed when he was dismissed from the Kingsguard and rode with him to Riverrun. Guarded him every day, and fucked him every night in his beautiful crimson tent, riding his cock like her life depended on it.

Stood by his side in her white cape while the Blackfish insulted him, and in her golden Kingsguard armour as he threatened Edmure Tully’s baby.

Her back straight, her face expressionless as he told Lord Edmure how all he cared about was Cersei. Getting back to Cersei.

Those words had _hurt_. But of course, he didn’t mean them. He kissed the frown off her face when no-one could see, and when they had taken the castle, he had given her the honour of killing the Blackfish. Laughed when it had only taken her two blows.

They fucked that night in the Blackfish’s bed, and it was a strange night indeed.

On his insistence, she tied him to the bed with his swordbelt, unsheathed Maiden’s Blood and ran that exquisitely sharp piece of Valyrian steel up his chest. It felt good in her hands, almost magic. Almost alive.

“Yes … hurt me,” he panted. “Fucking hurt me, I deserve it.”

She didn’t hesitate. Took the sword in both hands and dug the point of it under his chin, hard enough to draw blood. He sucked in a breath, and his cock, poking out of his breeches where she’d been sucking it, inched a little higher.

His eyes met her eyes.

She straddled him. Lowered herself onto his cock without breaking the look.

_Only Cersei matters to me._

She felt the weight of Maiden’s Blood in her hands, and she thought how easy it would be to cut his throat right then. Ride him while he drowned in his own blood.

“Hurt me.”

But she didn’t.

Instead, she sheathed the sword in its ornate scabbard and held it widthways across his neck. Pressed down hard. Stared into his eyes as he fought her, fought for breath, mouth gaping like a landed fish.

She pulled it up when his face turned red, and he’d gasped and coughed and choked.

“Again,” he said.

_Only Cersei_.

That time, he bucked up into her hard as he’d strangled, hand like a claw in his restraints. His lips were blue this time when she stopped.

_She needs me._

Brienne kissed him as he gasped, stopping him from drawing too much breath, smothering him with her mouth.

“Please,” he wheezed. “Again.”

His eyes were bloodshot. His tongue swollen. His cock hard inside her like a trebuchet. The trebuchet he’d threatened to use on Edmure’s baby.

She’d pressed down on his throat again, and that time, she didn’t stop until he blacked out. For a second when she released him, she thought that she had killed him.

She was surprised that it felt like relief. She was surprised when the thought made her come.

But he’d burst back to life with a gasp and a roar, and he’d come so hard. _So hard._ And inside her, too. He’d never come inside her before.

He looked frightened.

The next day, he had to find a taller gorget to hide the red stripe across his throat. His wrists were bruised as well, his eyes red with broken blood vessels. He rode back in sullen silence, and didn’t look at her all day.

She thought about riding away from him then – it would have been easy. The column of Lannister soldiers riding up the Kingsroad had numbered in the thousands. She could lose herself among them, sneak away when she spotted the chance. She could bury the white cloak in a ditch somewhere, hide in towns and villages. Maybe run to a port somewhere and get on a boat to Tarth and her father.

But she stayed.

Even when they returned to Kings’ Landing, even when they saw that plume of thick green smoke. Even when he rode, panicked and distraught through the streets, desperate to find Cersei, Brienne stayed by his side.

_Only Jaime._

Her white cloak billowed in the acrid green air as they rode through the streets of the city together, her golden breastplate glowing green in the light of the wildfire. And when someone, some grieving woman who’d lost everything she had, threw a piece of rotten fruit at Jaime, Brienne climbed down from her horse and hit the woman. Punched her to the floor in front of her children. Had her dragged to a black cell.

_Only Jaime matters to me._

When they rode into the keep together, she stood silent and perfect behind him as the braziers gleamed fierce in his eyes, but he only had eyes for Cersei. Cersei on the throne. Cersei with that twisted silver crown upon her head. Cersei looking grim and black and dangerous. The Queen. The _Queen_.

_He needs me._

She begged him to leave. They could have done it, then. They could have turned around and left King’s Landing together, right then, and Cersei would never have known.

But he stayed. And so had Brienne.

Stayed while Cersei stripped her of her white cloak, dressed her newly in a black one. Black and silver, head to toe. Stayed by the Mountain’s side, guarding Jaime as the Mountain guarded Cersei, always silent, always with the scent of death.

Brienne felt dead, too. Twin to the Mountain, as Jaime was twin to Cersei.

She knew it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nights and days blurred into one another – filled with Jaime. Guarding Jaime. Jaime, coming to her cell to put his face or hand or cock between her legs and tell her that he loved her, leaving again as soon as he finished.

Every night. Thirty days without interruption. Then sixty. Then ninety.

Ninety days since Riverrun, and not a drop of blood. Not one.

She couldn’t bear to tell him. She couldn’t hear the lies. The promises. She didn’t trust herself not to do whatever he wanted, or believe that he would find a way.

A way for what? They’d had ways. He hadn’t taken them, and nor had she.

One hundred and twenty days since Riverrun. Four moons. And Jaime married Cersei.

And now Brienne stood outside their bedroom door, her armour on its loosest notch, listening to them fucking on their wedding night. She knew it now. There were no ways. No way away from Cersei. Jaime didn’t want to.

She hears him moaning and she knows that moan. He’s coming. Spending his seed in Cersei’s cunt, wrapped in her arms, wrapped in her legs. Jaime. Her Jaime. Cersei’s Jaime.

She can’t do this any more. She can’t.

Brienne abandons her post. Drops her helmet at her feet. It rolls away, down the corridor. She doesn’t pick it up. She walks away.

She goes to her cell, tries to pack a bag.

But she has nothing. No clothes, no armour, no sword of her own that isn’t Queensguard silvered. She has to go to Jaime’s room to steal things. Crams a saddlebag full of his clothing – fine leathers, fine silks. Fine boots and jackets and breeches. A long black cloak, to keep her warm.

Then she sees it. On the wall.

Joffrey’s Valyrian steel sword. The one called Widow’s Wail.

She walks to it. Gazes at it. Reaches for it.

“What are you doing?”

She turns around. Jaime. Tunic undone. A wine glass in his hand. He closes the door.

She picks up the sword. Holds it in her hand. It feels good there.

“You left your post,” he says. “Were you waiting for me? Cersei’s asleep, but if she finds out …”

“Shut up,” she says.

He blinks. She has never spoken to him that way before. “Shut up?”

“Shut UP!” she roars. Her voice so loud it makes him flinch.

He shuts up. But takes a step towards her, his hand outstretched. She hits him. Knocks him backward. Hits him again across the face with the flat of Widow’s Wail’s scabbard.

He falls against the door. She pins him. All her weight. All her hate. All her spite. All the times he’s lied. Her face in his face with a snarl.

It feels no different from kissing him. How could she have ever thought that this was love? She presses her knee into his balls, presses until he whines.

“Do it,” he pants. “Yes, hurt me. I deserve it.”

“You like that, don’t you? Women who hurt you. Women who fuck you up. Women who control you completely. That’s what this is with Cersei. That’s what you want from me too. You want to break me until I break you too.”

“I _love_ you Brienne.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do. I swear – can’t you feel it? Every time we –”

“Shut up!” she screams again. Right in his chiselled smarmy face.

“Please,” he says. His voice small. He gives a shuddery breath, the way he does when he’s about to come. His throat moving under his skin. Against her knee, his cock gets hard.

She drops him, disgusted, to the floor.

Turns away, walks two steps towards her bag and then turns back, a sudden rage taking hold of her like a tight fist around her guts. Before she’s had a chance to register the impulse, she’s kicked him. Right between the legs.

He screams out and then groans, rolling onto his side and curling into a ball. Coughing. Spluttering. Wheezing.

A memory of him, groaning in the mud while their captors beat him, comes to mind. She almost weakens then, almost throws herself on top of him to take care of him, to ease his pain, but she doesn’t. She can’t. Four moons.

She picks up Widow’s Wail and her bags and steps over him. Heads for the stables.

Jaime’s horse is there. The white he calls Honour. The name makes her laugh now, an almost hysterical, crazed laugh that bubbles out of her throat involuntarily.

Honour. His honour. How many times has he called Brienne his honour? How many times has he begged her to stay by his side while he wrestled with himself, trying to find his redemption?

Too many. Far too many.

She saddles Honour and puts her bags on his back. Finds a leather helm discarded on the floor and puts it on. They won’t notice her – no one has seen her face for years. They will think she is a man – just a man on a horse, riding out of King’s Landing. Riding out of King’s Landing forever.

She puts on Jaime’s black cloak and rides out of the stables. Losing herself in the milling crowds on the streets already.

She gets through the gates without anyone stopping her, without anyone even looking at her. Across the bridge and out of the city. Out onto the Kingsroad, out into the fresh air and the trees and the rain and the mud.

Brienne blinks. Stops, to look around. It’s cold, and she takes a moment to pull a pair of gloves on.

Then she rides on, taking the eastern road into the Kingswood. Towards the coast, towards Tarth, towards home.

In the woods, the air smells sweet, like freedom, like something she hasn’t smelled in years.

Already in her mind she can see her father’s face, feel the warmth of his embrace. For so many years, the thought of coming back to Tarth had worried her. What would she say? How could she explain herself?

A Kingsguard. A Queensguard, abandoning her post. Breaking her vow. Her father would feel shame.

Now she rehearsed it. Every twitch of muscle in her face. How her eyes would go dead, how her hand would rest on the new swell of her belly.

“The Kingslayer raped me,” she says aloud to the trees and the birds. A practised tremor in her voice. “He took my honour, father. I am pregnant with his bastard.”

She smiles and rubs her growing belly as she rides again. Her baby. Their baby. Her last chance at honour.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story, thanks so much for the wait, I have been busy with RL stuff so haven't been as fanfic-productive as I'd have liked lately!
> 
> Thanks so much to CaptainTarthister for her help and appreciation here. She's an open-all-hours sounding board who is just amazing in every way. She's encouraging, funny, sweet, infinitely knowledgeable and always up for a bit of wild speculation.
> 
> Before I go, just a note to say that anyone who comments moaning about tags will be deleted and won't be engaged with, okay? I'm not interested in turf wars or trying to tie myself in knots figuring out what constitutes baiting etc. Thank you :)


End file.
